


Atoms of Beauty

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Season 1, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:28:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22034824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: What if Will Graham hadn't been objectively beautiful?
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 161





	Atoms of Beauty

Aside from the noxious aftershave, Hannibal may never have noticed Will Graham, had Jack Crawford not brought them together. He is neither short, nor tall, and his build is average at best. His posture is atrocious and his tangled hair is wispy as an infant’s. He is pigeon-toed. His beard is so patchy that his jaw looks like an asymmetrical rock with bits of moss knocked off.

His mind, though, is fascinating. He can see and feel everything, from anyone’s point of view, and so intensely that he has to wall up his thoughts like prisoners in his own mind.

Hannibal thinks he would very much like to get to know the thoughts Will Graham has deemed the most dangerous.

*****

He finds that he likes looking at Will Graham, even though there’s really not much to look at.

He supposes it’s because that face is so unpredictable. The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle into his temples at different rates and the red blotches flash in his cheeks when he’s embarrassed, or sometimes just because.

Sometimes his chin pulls to one side when he’s talking and sometimes it doesn’t.

It juts out a bit when he’s eating, but just usually.

His mouth is woefully crooked, and even more so when he smiles. Yet Hannibal catches himself thinking of ways to make him happy so that he’ll smile more.

Of course this will eventually conflict with his other plans, but for now he wonders if Will would laugh to see him playing with those dogs of his.

*****

He unexpectedly makes Will smile the day he kills Tobias Budge. “I was worried you were dead,” he tells Will, who gives him a silent chuckle in reassurance. It makes Hannibal feel better and worse all at once.

Perhaps it’s the angle of the sunlight filtering in through the windows, but Hannibal thinks Will might possess an atom of beauty.

*****

The first time Will turns a gun on him, Hannibal has to remind himself to breathe. He forgets his breath not out of fear, but because for a few instants there’s no room for anything other than the thrill of being truly seen, and truly seeing another.

*****

Hannibal visits him in the pelagic darkness beneath the BSHCI and is struck by the way light seems to seek out Will’s face, like a halo that can’t quite decide if it belongs there or not.

But it is also like the eye of a sculptor, seeing the living thing inside the block of marble that nobody else may ever see. The uneven angles of his face are exaggerated, not lessened, and Hannibal already rues the moment he will have to stop staring at them, because not even his formidable memory will be able to do them justice when he tries to recall this moment later.

*****

Beauty is as much the aesthetics that greet one’s senses, as it is the longing created by its absence. There is a Will-shaped emptiness sitting across from him. Everything around it is unbearably ugly.

*****

His heart races as it rarely does when he opens his office door and sees the shape of Will’s broad, square shoulders, his slender waist and the tautness of his trousers over his hips. Will's hair gleams in the dimness of the waiting room light as if he were standing in the glow of the Golden Hour, posing for a most fortunate artist. His eyes, when he finally turns them towards Hannibal, are the darkest a blue might be before flooding into blackness.

“Were you expecting someone?” Will asks as he walks past.

“Only you,” Hannibal says.

_You, who are all the atoms of beauty that have ever existed._

-end-


End file.
